Chinese Ambassador to Israel Found Dead at Home; China Emerges as Potential Strain on U.S.-Israel Relationship

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By Fox News. China’s ambassador to Israel was found dead inside his home north of Tel Aviv on Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.

Du Wei, 57, arrived in Israel in mid-February amid the coronavirus outbreak and was living in the coastal city of Herzliya on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He previously served as China’s envoy to Ukraine.

Staff found Du unresponsive in his bed with no signs of violence to his body, the Haaretz daily reported. Initial media reports said Du’s cause of death appeared to be from a cardiac incident. (Read more from “Chinese Ambassador to Israel Found Dead at Home” HERE)

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China Emerges as Potential Strain on U.S.-Israel Relationship

By The Hill. Increasingly close ties between China and Israel risk straining the special relationship Israel has with the U.S., especially as Washington ramps up its feud with Beijing over the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The historic alliance narrowly avoided a diplomatic fallout this week with Israel relenting to U.S. concerns and delaying a Chinese infrastructure project in the country, coinciding with a whirlwind visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Jerusalem.

While the U.S. has long expressed concern to Israel over its ties with China, Israeli officials have signaled they are not stepping back from relations with Beijing entirely.

Pompeo used his latest visit to highlight the risk of doing business with the Communist Party.

“We do not want the Chinese Communist Party to have access to Israeli infrastructure, Israeli communication systems, all of the things that put Israeli citizens at risk,” Pompeo said in an interview Thursday with an Israeli news channel, “and in turn put the capacity for America to work alongside Israel on important projects at risk as well.” (Read more from “China Emerges as Potential Strain on U.S.-Israel Relationship” HERE)

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Iran Calls Israel ‘Rabid, Predatory Dog’ as Jewish State Swears in New Government

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By Newsweek. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ali Khamenei railed against Israel this weekend as the Jewish state’s parliament approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new unity government.

“The Zionist regime & its criminal supporters recognize no bounds in brutality & trampling of moral norms,” Khamenei wrote in a series of tweets on Saturday evening local time. “They consider genocide, destruction, the massacre of children & women, & any oppression permissible in #Palestine. This rabid, predatory dog attacks innocent ppl [sic].”

Khamenei also accused the Zionist regime of failing to abide by any treaty. They do not “understand any language but the language of force,” he wrote. “Israel has proven it only knows force. It cannot be spoken to except with the Palestinian nation’s language of power & the Islamic nation’s global power.”

(Read more from “Iran Calls Israel ‘Rabid, Predatory Dog’ as Jewish State Swears in New Government” HERE)

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Airstrike Attributed to Israel Said to Kill 7 Iran-Backed Fighters in East Syria

By The Times of Israel. Unknown warplanes attacked Iran-backed fighters in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, killing several of the Iraqi militiamen, Syrian opposition activists said Sunday.

The strikes late Saturday targeted a base near the border town of Boukamal, killing seven fighters, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.

Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based activist from Syria’s eastern Deir el-Zour province, confirmed that a strike hit Iran-backed Iraqi fighters in the area, but had no exact word on casualties. The strikes came days after reinforcements were brought into the area from Iraq, the Observatory and Abu Laila said.

Abu Laila, who runs Deir Ezzor 24, an activist collective that reports on news in the border area, said Israel was most likely behind the attack, but gave no evidence. (Read more from “Airstrike Attributed to Israel Said to Kill 7 Iran-Backed Fighters in East Syria” HERE)

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Burning EU and Other Flags Can Now Bring German Jail Term

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Germany has made public burning of the EU flag or that of another country punishable by up to three years in jail, classing it as a hate crime.

The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag. . .

The move followed Social Democrat (SPD) complaints about protesters’ burning of the Israeli flag in Berlin in 2017.

Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, a member of the centre-left SPD, said “burning flags publicly has nothing to do with peaceful protests”. She said it stoked up “hatred, anger and aggression”, and hurt many people’s feelings. (Read more from “Burning EU and Other Flags Can Now Bring German Jail Term” HERE)

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China: Trump ‘Like a Giant Baby on the Brink of a Meltdown’

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Chinese state media ridiculed U.S. allegations of wrongdoing in the coronavirus pandemic in a spate of editorials on Thursday and Friday, mocking U.S. President Donald Trump as a baby throwing a temper tantrum and repeating the Communist Party’s standard line that all questions about China’s conduct are merely attempts by other nations to distract from their own purportedly inferior responses to the coronavirus.

China’s Global Times claimed people around the world think Trump is “insane” for threatening to disengage economically from China in the wake of the pandemic. . .

The threats advanced by the CCP through its Global Times included ominous warnings about invading Taiwan, as well as confident predictions that American consumers would suffer more than the CCP from disengagement, which sound very similar to the entirely incorrect predictions CCP mouthpieces made before the pre-coronavirus trade war:

China has nothing to be afraid of as “in the past, we didn’t solve the Taiwan question because we wanted to maintain the China-US relationship, and if the US unilaterally cuts it off, we can just reunify Taiwan immediately since the Chinese mainland has an overwhelming advantage to solve this long-standing problem.”

“Trump is like a giant baby on the brink of a meltdown as he faces tremendous pressure due to massive failures that caused such a high death toll,” Shen Yi, an expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times. “It’s like someone who wants to show his guts when he passes by a cemetery in midnight. He needs to shout to give himself the courage,” he said.

(Read more from “China: Trump ‘Like a Giant Baby on the Brink of a Meltdown’” HERE)

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North Korea Mysteriously Locks Down Major Border City

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North Korea has mysteriously locked down a major border city, a move reportedly connected to either the coronavirus — or a planned event for missing-again despot Kim Jong Un.

The Hermit Kingdom — one of the few nations on Earth claiming to be coronavirus-free — barred entry earlier this month to Rason, a city of 20,000 that is a major hub for trade with Russia and China, sources told Radio Free Asia Tuesday.

The notoriously secretive nation has refused to tell its citizens why the city was suddenly locked down, RFA said.

Many fear that it could be a sign of a coronavirus outbreak, with bordering China also sealing off Jilin city and Shulan close to their shared border after a recent spike in cases. (Read more from “North Korea Mysteriously Locks Down Major Border City” HERE)

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China Is Now a Dangerous Adversary of the United States

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Thursday’s breaking news regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to pull approvals for dozens of mask makers in China proves the point: China must now be seen as an adversary.

For half a century, the American establishment has seen China as a partner on the international stage. Some Americans looked at China and saw only the size of its potential market for American goods; others looked at China and saw it as a strategic linchpin in the Cold War against the Soviet Union; still others saw a vast manufacturing plant with a low-paid workforce that could be used to produce “American” goods inexpensively.

Presidents and administrations both Democratic and Republican saw China as a partner, and worked regularly to deepen the ties that bound the two countries, even as a relatively small number of us voiced concerns over what we saw as the clear national security threat posed by the relationship. . .

The Chinese Communist Party’s behavior in the coronavirus crisis has made clear that China is no “partner” to the United States. China, clearly, is an adversary— and, going forward, the United States must treat it as such, across the entire spectrum of policy.

For now, though, let’s just focus on one aspect of the relationship — the threat posed by China’s virtual chokehold on American medical supplies. Once we opened up free trade with China in the early 2000s, we began shifting production from the United States to China. Our last aspirin manufacturing facility closed down in 2002, as did our last vitamin C plant. Our last penicillin plant closed in 2004. Chinese manufacturers, subsidized by their government, picked up the slack. (Read more from “China Is Now a Dangerous Adversary of the United States” HERE)

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Sweden Cared More About Islamophobia Than Saving Elderly in Nursing Homes From Coronavirus

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. . .Sweden has a higher rate of deaths in care homes than Norway or Finland, and lockdown enthusiasts have struggled to explain why keeping bars open would be killing people in housing for the elderly.

But there is a crucial difference between Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish care homes.

A decade ago, in Sweden, 13% of the workers in care homes were immigrants, while only 5% in Norway and 1% in Finland were. Currently, 28% of care home workers in Sweden are foreigners, but in Stockholm, where the real dying has occurred, 55% of the care home workers are foreign immigrants. . .

In an interview, Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former Chief Epidemologist and Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), let slip the formerly unspeakable.

Giesecke admitted that Sweden had failed to protect the elderly, and noted that, “many of the people working in nursing homes are from other countries, they’re refugees or asylum seekers.” (Read more from “Sweden Cared More About Islamophobia Than Saving Elderly in Nursing Homes From Coronavirus” HERE)

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China: U.S. ‘Sabotaged’ Global Coronavirus Efforts; China Renews Lockdowns

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By Breitbart. China’s state-run People’s Daily on Tuesday accused the United States of “sabotaging” the global battle against the Wuhan coronavirus by criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The latest twist to Chinese propaganda is an allegation that the U.S. ignored warnings from China and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), a perfect inversion of the reality that W.H.O. spread false information fed to it by China that greatly increased the damage caused by the coronavirus in countries that took the W.H.O. seriously.

The People’s Daily claimed the entire world is in “shock” over America’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, basing its claim of “sabotage” largely on claims that the United States has handled the disease poorly and wallowed in “egoism” by blaming the CCP for unleashing it:

The US now has the largest number of confirmed cases and fatalities of COVID-19 in the world, and is the current epicenter of the pandemic. Its reluctance to promote global cooperation to tackle the lethal virus has made it a less credible and consistent partner for the international community. Experts and officials around the world have criticized the nation’s egoism amid a global pandemic, condemning its failure to protect its own people, as well as its hindering of joint global efforts to stop the virus’ spread.

(Read more from “China: U.S. ‘Sabotaged’ Global Coronavirus Efforts” HERE)

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China Is Renewing Lockdown Restrictions After New Coronavirus Clusters Were Found in Wuhan and Shulan, 2 Cities Hundreds of Miles Apart

By Business Insider. Two new clusters of coronavirus cases in China have been reported hundreds of miles apart, sparking fears of another large-scale outbreak.

On Sunday, the country’s National Health Commission reported 17 new coronavirus diagnoses, the highest number in almost two weeks, and the second day in a row new cases were in the double digits, Reuters reported.

Fourteen cases were in Shulan, a city of more than 700,000 near the Russian and North Korean borders. They were all traced to a 45-year-old woman working at a police laundry department with no history of recent travel or contact with an infected person.

The government has reclassified Shulan as a high-risk region, the only city in China with that classification. Authorities have closed public spaces, with residents told to stay home unless there were “unusual circumstances.” (Read more from “China Is Renewing Lockdown Restrictions After New Coronavirus Clusters Were Found in Wuhan and Shulan, 2 Cities Hundreds of Miles Apart” HERE)

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Israeli PM Suggests Microchipping Kids

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Cyber experts slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his proposal to “microchip” children who return to schools and kindergartens as the coronavirus lockdown is lifted, Ynet reported on Friday.

While speaking at a press conference on Monday, Netanyahu suggested the Health Ministry use new technology to help Israel adjust to its new routine as the state is lifting the coronavirus lockdown. “That is, technology that has not been used before and is allowed under the legislation we shall enact,” he clarified.

“I spoke with our heads of technology in order to find measures Israel is good at, such as sensors. For instance, every person, every kid – I want it on kids first – would have a sensor that would sound an alarm when you get too close, like the ones on cars,” the prime minister said.

“It will be hard to do it to more than a million schoolchildren who return to their educational institutions in order to ensure one student sits at the distance of two meters from another. It is fictional and dangerous,” cyber resilience expert Einat Meron told Ynet. . .

The Prime Minister’s Office responded to the report, telling Ynet Netanyahu’s suggestion “is not to be implemented through databases, but through simple technology notifying [the citizens] about their distance. It is a voluntary option that is designed to help children keep their distance, like Mobileye with vehicles.” (Read more from “Israeli PM Suggests Microchipping Kids” HERE)

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Putin to Loosen Lockdown Despite Russia’s Emergence as Coronavirus Hot Spot

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Russia is easing orders that require most workers to stay at home even as the country’s coronavirus cases continue to grow rapidly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the move on Monday and said that the “nonworking period” would be lifted the following day.

“Starting from tomorrow, May 12, the national period of nonworking days will be over for all sectors of the economy,” he said during a meeting with officials, according to Agence France-Presse.

Putin said that individual regions of the country would still be able to maintain restrictions to combat the pandemic. The mayor of Moscow extended a lockdown of Russia’s capital through the rest of May. (Read more from “Putin to Loosen Lockdown Despite Russia’s Emergence as Coronavirus Hot Spot” HERE)

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